I was looking back at my early childhood (I've got to stop doing that, so distracting) and it occurred to me that all that time, I had been hyperfocused on gender vs sex, and needed to slap a label on people that was just boy or girl or else I got very upset. The differences were both comforting and distressing, but I had this obsession with them no matter how much I hated it. Any other guys or girls or in-betweeners or neithers remember being like that in younger years? If so, do you think it was related to being TG?
Maybe not the answer you were looking for, but....no, not really.
When I was a kid, boys and girls interacted with each other. We were equal. The label boy or girl didn't matter at all, because we all liked the same stuff. I guess I was lucky like that.
I'm actually just looking for answers :P There's no right or wrong, just seeing how people reacted in childhood and if they knew or didn't or something in between the two.
Me, I didn't treat people differently, but did feel this need to put a label on them, mainly because my own label wasn't right and I thought if I practiced being on the other side of that then it would go away. But nope, here I am. There were so many precursors in my childhood but the closest I ever came to coming out when I was little was when a friend asked me if I was a boy or a girl, and I practically screamed "I DON'T KNOW!!!!!!!!111@($&)T$UE" (yes, pronounced exactly like that- wait, forgot the silent 6. Whoops.) at him. My mother did not like it at all and frantically asked me what I meant, so I tried to shrug it off as a joke and felt miserable for even saying anything. Of course, she doesn't remember that and I'm making it up. I should go find my friend and ask him to tell her so she'll stop "forgetting".
What do you mean by 'put a label on them'? Do you just mean you were very focused on their assigned sex? It's funny; now that you mention it, I subconsciously ended up doing this at about middle school. But it was because of the very different way girls treated me than boys. Before, I really didn't notice much. After that, assigned sex subconsciously determined who I felt comfortable around (guys) and who I was shy around (girls). So, I guess I was focused on assigned sex because I acted very differently with people based on it. Not that I ever actively thought about it at that time.
Anyway, this continued through adulthood and I'm only now starting to not do it as much. Probably due to transition.
I think it was probably related to being TG. Most cis girls aren't that weird around other girls. But in general, I think cis people probably put more focus on labels. Even guys and girls with lots of friends of the opposite gender still sometimes are very focused on differences. You know, the girl who asks her male friend what to do about her boyfriend 'cause he's a guy, he should know'. A lot of cis people seem to love 'men are from mars, women are from venus' type stereotypes.
Anyway, not sure if any of this relates to what you're talking about.
Pretty much, yeah; I mean that I needed to know if they were a boy or a girl and would then come up with a set of expectations; there was a tomboyish girl I went to school with who liked karate and boys clothing and it basically made me flip out because even when I tried to put her into a new category of "girl that acts like a boy", she had long hair- and everyone knows boys can't have long hair ::). Thankfully I got over it eventually and we're friends now.
I would sit there and scrutinize until I could come to a conclusion on boy or girl if someone was androgynous, and fed into stereotypes because so many females around me fit the "female" stereotype to a T, and same went for males and "male" stereotypes. I played with both boys and girls, but there was always something harder to understand about girls, especially when I got older. Though that's another thing.
Then I went through an anti-label phase where I needed to find people not conforming to their gender, now I've outgrown both. But the need to play "spot the difference" seemed to be because I couldn't do that with myself. Everything was down the middle with me, except my stupid freaking body.
Dammit, I was weird enough without all of this stuff :P
Personally, as a kid, I just didn't socialise very well with girls and I preferred having boys for friends. My parents were somewhat tough on the labeling, they've been trying to push being girly my whole life. For example, when I eventually persuaded them to get me a skateboard they folded, but got me a pink, girly one. So even if they folded with something a little less stereo-typically feminine, they tried to find a girly option. I was never interested in girl's toys so I found having friends that were boys I had a way to play with the toys I wanted to as well as avoid games I had no wish to play.
The one thing I am entirely against though is labeling in marketing. Girl's stuff is pink and boy's stuff is blue. It took a LOT of convincing my parents before I got my first Meccano set over useless Barbies and that's just stupid. I liked Meccano because I loved building things. By putting it in a blue box, however, it was considered a boy's toy. There's obvious boy's toys but we don't consider lego to be gender specific, do we? So why slap a gender role on what is essentially an educational toy?
It seems to be being better addressed these days but I still don't find it anywhere close to where it should be. When I went to a toy store I avoided the pink section like the plague and my parents wanted nothing but to drag me to that section. I do feel that slapping a gender on a toy is just pointless. I'm sure there's PLENTY toys in the boy's sections at toy stores that girls would indeed be interested in and vice versa! For example, there's a lot of male chefs out there, and very often the food and kitchen toys are aimed at girls.
So I think in terms of marketing there's some very strong labeling going on especially in younger years through clothing and toys. As one grows up though I'd probably say it's easier for women to experiment over men at the beginning stage. Girls dressing in boys, or what are often referred to as "unisex" these days, tshirts isn't something one immediately sees and think "There's a TG!" Lots of girls wear these unisex tees. And girls wear baggy pants, etc. It's just a norm, especially among more sport orientated girls who maybe want to wear a football (soccer) shirt. Not every girl goes out every day in make up and particularly girly clothes. So I'd say when you're in your teens, in terms of outside sources forcing a label I'd say more for boys than girls but with leeway. Around late teens and after though, I'd say it starts to slip a little more the other way, that's how I found it personally at least. In terms of socially, however, there is some pressure I feel. If you hang around the same people all day without make up and in boy clothes, then questions do start being asked and it does start being awkward (for example a school setting).
I found it easier before puberty to not worry so much about labels, despite my parent's hangups. Once I reached puberty, it started to get a lot tougher for me. I was attracted to boys, but I felt like one of the boys myself and everything became a bit awkward. I've always had more friends who were boys, but now I actually started to fancy some of them and that got very confusing and I think that's where the label of gender vs sexuality kicks in.
However, I find it prudent to mention that one of my best friends is female, happy that way and is pretty much exactly like me in every other way. She's perfectly happy to live this way as a girl, and feels very much like a girl who just happens to hate the idea of stereotypes based on gender. And I know this friend well enough (and for long enough) to know it's not denial. So I think in this day and age, it's really hard to slap label on girls and boys with some kind of expectation of how they'll turn out. Just because a boy likes girl's stuff doesn't always mean they'll end up TG too. And just because a girl likes boy's clothing, it might turn out to be nothing but a wish for better comfort! Lol. I think parents can panic when girls and boys show signs of liking something not so stereo-typical of their gender.
I hate when people NEED to know the sex of a child or NEED to have a girl or boy in the family. In my opinion, we shouldn't assume anything based on the gender of a child, and I feel there's a lot of expectations among the majority of parents based on sex. These days girls can aspire to do anything a boy can do. Girl's being refused an education in some countries appalls us, but someone saying they really, really want a girl isn't something we question. Why? Whenever I hear something like that I can't help but think, "So, if you had a kid like me, or even my aforementioned friend, they'd be a huge disappointment?"
Yeah Matty, that's terrible to even have a 'pink aisle' in toy stores. That pretty much makes it off limits to little boys because even if he wanted something from there, the parents would probably be hesitant. I don't know if it's still like this today, but in the 90s it got really ridiculous with literally everything aimed at girls made in pink plastic and coming in pink boxes. It wasn't even that bad in the 80s when I was little!
Yeah, I think the thing with stereotypes and labels is that few girls fit them. And most tomboys grow up to be ordinary housewives. I know we trans people always look into our childhood for 'proof' or whatever, but plenty of those of our assigned gender behaved in gender nonconforming ways and ended up typical cis men and women like your friend.
Quote from: Not-so Fat Admin on March 30, 2013, 03:18:58 PM
Yeah, I think the thing with stereotypes and labels is that few girls fit them. And most tomboys grow up to be ordinary housewives. I know we trans people always look into our childhood for 'proof' or whatever, but plenty of those of our assigned gender behaved in gender nonconforming ways and ended up typical cis men and women like your friend.
Yeah - Gender norms can strangle you even if you aren't transgender. People like what they want to like.
I think I was actually the opposite and still am to an extent. When I was very young, maybe around the age of five, I used to differentiate between genders but had no understanding of sexuality yet. I remember watching cartoons and becoming extremely depressed after realizing that all of the main characters in my favorite shows were male and that I was different from them and wasn't allowed to be like them being that I had been born a female.
As I got older though, this changed a little because I had a mixture of male and female friends in school. It made me learn from an early age that people of both genders were capable of having both feminine and masculine qualities at the same time so I didn't differentiate between the two genders as much. I just saw people for their personalities, I suppose. Even now when I'm watching sports like (American) football where the teams are made up of all males, I know they're males and I'll refer to players with the correct male pronouns of course but I don't view them necessarily as males, just as a bunch of people on the football field. It's kind of hard to explain.
So, rather than neatly labeling everyone I just seemed to generalize everyone.
As for sex, I also learned pretty early on that sexuality and gender are two different things and it used to bother me when I would have to fill out forms where they asked for "sex" rather than for "gender".
Pfft, the forms bother me either way.
Sex- "What the hell is it your business what's in my pants?! I don't identify that way >:("
Gender- "What the hell does what's in my pants have to do with my gender identity? I don't identify that way >:("
One of these days I'm going to go insane and draw a middle finger in that field. All joking aside, I find it interesting seeing how people reacted to gender stereotypes. What I love about this is how transphobic I was acting while earning odd looks from every singe parent for being that weird kid who was a little bit too wild all while wearing bright pink. If I ever wore what I used to wear, I think I'd vomit up multiple organs from the obnoxious colors.
Truth be told I had zero concept of my own gender identity, so it came out as "screw the rules I do what I want" while I sat there trying to judge how to fit in. I think.
Well, my MTBI personality type is INTJ :P
I was like this scientific observer when I was a kid. Watching the differences and behavior of boys and girls, and convinced that they simply didn't apply to me at all. It was uncomfortable in a mild and detatched way. I would get mad at gender policing on the playground though. Except for the girls I had crushes on, pretty much all of my friends were boys, and I remember one of my best guy friends was slightly effeminate. He came to school in this pinkish polo shirt and got bullied for it so relentlessly that they made him cry and I just lost it. I ripped into this one kid so hard it almost ended up in a physical altercation. It was all pretty ridiculous actually, we both got teased for a while after, some jerks called me his husband for the rest of the school year ::) But yet there's also this ambiguity in childhood, that aside from the times when you do something in direct contradiction of gender role "rules" most kids couldn't care less. I was literally one of the boys before the dreaded puberty. I was no different to them because I acted like them. Which is why I didn't really have a lot of dysphoria before puberty started.
My parents were actually really good about gender roles and what not. My tomboyishness was viewed as cute and endearing when I was a kid (oh how quickly that can change though :-\ ) Most of my toys were neutral or masculine and not a care was given. Legos, play dough, an ungodly amount of bayblades and hot wheels sets. But the fact that everything marketed towards girls is pink and princess is BS. There's nothing at all wrong with liking pink but seriously, it's the shallowest of marketing assumptions. My female friends and my sisters would play with my "boy" toys. I would even play barbies with my little sisters on occasion (though they'd get mad at me for cutting all the hair off and not caring what they wore or if they were getting married and having babies ::) ) child play isn't as gender specific like most cis people like to think.
Apparently I beheaded all of my dolls *and* let the dog chew them up. Though I did like making concoctions in the oven that came with one of them. I was big on toy cars, and legos to a lesser extent because I liked building things but my hands wouldn't cooperate. But I loved bugs to death, to the point where I almost beat up this older kid for killing a spider XD
This is interesting, though.
Honestly, I actually found myself less interested in gender labels as a kid than everyone else was. All of the other boys were really big on the whole "no girls allowed" thing, and running away from "cooties," and were always interested in segregating everyone into boys over here and girls over there, while I really didn't care. In fact, every single one of my absolute best friends as a kid were girls, and I never really understood why there was such a divide. I've always been a rebel when it comes to gender stereotypes. I hated the uber-masculine boyish toys that focused on war and violence just as much as I hated the uber-feminine girlish toys that were all about frills and shopping and beauty and PINK. And when it came to certain toys like the ribbon-dancer and sky-dancers, I seriously sighed and asked "why are they marketing these only toward girls? I think they're cool!"
So yeah. I never really saw gender as being a big deal, even as a kid. I played with both boys and girls pretty much equally, and to be honest I hated the stereotypes of both genders equally. Maybe it's because I saw how untrue they were even from a young age. With my female friends, they were nothing like the girls in the commercials. I always told them "but you're not like that. You're fun!"
So yeah. No, I never had any sort of interest in labeling people based on their gender. All I saw was a bunch of fun kids that I loved playing with, and to me their gender was pretty much incidental. And so was mine. I never lived my life based on stereotypes of what boys were "supposed" to be like, nor internalized them. And that is one of the reasons why it tore me apart so much when suddenly in middle school androgyny didn't exist anymore. If you didn't act tough and masculine, you were suddenly an abomination that only deserved ridicule.
This is why I didn't really feel any gender dysphoria as a kid. Yes, I acted more like a girl socially. I wasn't as interested in rough-and-tumble play, and I much preferred quieter, more intimate playtime, mainly consisting of coming up with stories, and singing, and acting out scenes from Disney movies, and a million different forms of make-believe. But nobody cared at that time. If you were quiet and "nice" as a boy, nobody really gave a damn, so neither did I. But then, again, in middle school when boys aren't "allowed" to be nice anymore, and have to act tough and manly and emotionally-stoic, that was when I became completely OBSESSED with gender, because every single time I got made fun of, I started noticing that girls weren't made fun of for doing the exact same things that I was being teased for, so I started getting jealous, and started completely obsessing over all of the things that made girls girls. And the more I studied, the more I envied them, and the more I realized that I felt like one of them even though I was stuck in a male body.